Life Lessons

Sometimes the world comes crashing down. We’ve all known the triggers of major crises. Physical illness, relationship difficulties, stress, or depression. These things occasionally pay a visit. Sometimes all of them at once. But they have a reason for coming. They’re not setbacks. They’re not here to hurt. They are great opportunities to pause your life and think for a while how you got here and where are you going. A crisis is a lesson.

For a while I turned up the volume, closed my eyes, and let the music flood my mind. As always, the sound brought with it a stream, a river, a voracious torrent of memories. Memories half-forgotten and vividly remembered, memories of happiness and of pain, memories of love and loss. Memories, rivers of life. Yet rivers never twice entered.

I have had to maintain some rather big pieces of software I wrote a few years ago. Apart from being a special kind of hell (“WTF?! How could I have written atrocities like these?”) this experience reminded me what I’ve learned during those eight years I’ve spent writing software for money.